1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a detection device for detecting biological micro particles such as for example living or dead bacteria, viruses, spores, pollen or biological toxins that can be marked using probes capable of being detected by radiation, in particular a detection device for detecting living bacteria, viruses or biological toxins by means of fluorescent nucleic acid probes or proteins as probes. The invention also relates to a detection method for detecting biological micro particles such as for example living bacteria, viruses, spores, pollen and/or biological toxins in a fluid.
2. Background Information
Previous techniques for detecting living bacteria require a time-consuming step of cultivation of the micro organisms. This conventional technique of detection of living cells or cell number determination of living cells requires an enormous amount of time and can be performed only in suitable biological laboratories (S1 to S4 laboratories). An alternative technique for the detection of living bacteria is the in situ hybridization. The in situ hybridization technique is a standard technique already frequently applied in molecular biology. There have been numerous publications on this technique.
Concerning bacteria detection, the company of Vermicon AG, Munich, offers ready-to-use detection kits, i.e. ensembles of chemicals, for different bacterial strain.
Previous detection methods including in situ hybridization are described in more detail in WO 01/68900 A2, WO 02/101089 A2, DE 103 07 732 A1, WO 2005/031004 A2, U.S. Pat. No. 6,844,157B2, US 2005/064444 A1, US/20050202477 A1, US 2005/0202476 A1 as well as US 2005/0136446 A1. For further details it is explicitly referred to these prior art documents.
Presently however, the in situ hybridization is possible in the practice only by using a very expensive and highly sensitive fluorescence microscope.